NIH

The National Institutes of Health has awarded $2.6 million to University of Georgia researchers to develop new drugs to treat human African Trypanosomiasis, also known as African sleeping sickness:

African Trypanosomiasis, commonly known as HAT, is caused by a single-celled parasite called Trypanosoma brucei, which is transmitted to humans through the bite of a blood-sucking insect called a tsetse fly.

Following a bite, the parasite multiplies in subcutaneous tissues and eventually crosses the blood-brain barrier to infect the central nervous system, causing changes in...

Congratulations to the doctoral training program in genetics, which recently received a renewal of its funding from the National Institutes of Health for the 41st consecutive year.

The training grants enable institutions to make National Research Service Awards to individuals selected by them for predoctoral and postdoctoral research training in specified shortage areas.

In its 41st year, the genetics graduate program is one of the longest running Genetics training grants in the nation. The grant has been renewed for five years (~$1.4 million), and the renewal will fund six...

Ping Ma, professor in the department of statistics, has been awarded $1.3 million in funding from the National Institutes of Health to develop statistical tools to further clarify the causes of many diseases-including cancer, heart disease and aging-related illnesses. Over four years, Ma and his team of researchers will look at something known as small RNAs, hoping to unravel their regulatory role on abnormal variations in genetic transcription:

"Multiple interconnected research programs for tackling the challenge of big data have been actively pursued by my lab," he said. "...

Jorge Escalante of the department of microbiology conducts an extensive research operation into one of the most complex challenges in health science - biosynthesis of the coenzyme B-12. The National Institutes of Health, longtime supporters of his investigations, this fall renewed a prestigious long term commitment to this important research:

The MERIT, Method to Extend Research in Time, award is an extension of $2.1 million to an initial five-year award announced in 2010. It will support Escalante's research through 2020.

The Striepen lab is one of UGA's outstanding research teams, conducting the painstaking, laborious, long-term research that can turn the tide against some of the worst communicable scourages known to man. An important aspect of Dr. Striepen's work is taching graduate and postdoctoral students the methods and culture of a successful researvh enterprise. Those efforts have been rewarded with a $1.25 million NIH grant announced today, to support training researchers over the next five years:

"The University of Georgia is uniquely positioned as a training ground for the next generation...